Diner: Fries and Gravy 🥁 🥁 🥁 🥁
/Year Released: 1982
Directed by: Barry Levinson
Starring: Mickey Rourke, Steven Guttenberg, Kevin Bacon, Daniel Stern, Tim Daly, Ellen Barkin
(R, 110m.)
Genre: Comedy
“If you want to talk, you’ll always have the guys at the diner. You don’t need a girl if you wanna talk.” –Eddie Simmons (Steve Guttenberg)
American Graffiti Baltimore style. But this one is more authentic, and quite a bit more vulgar, as well. So yes, we have a taste, just a bit, of Animal House, too.
As well as 2 great tag Lines:
· What they wanted most wasn't on the menu.
· Suddenly, life was more than french fries, gravy and girls.
But somehow, I was drawn to this the wild group of eccentrics who seem more real than Ron Howard’s kind of staged saga.
And the seemingly amoral manipulator, Boogie (an extremely young and handsome Mickey Rourke) drew me in even as he repulsed me, too. I guess I was like the girl he took to the show to win a bet about his being able to get her to do “something” – well that’s where all the vulgarity comes in. She forgives him after he offers such a real sounding explanation. You cannot help but feel the charm and confidence oozing from every pore, and it dazzles, at least for a while.
But Boogie is in trouble, and that is his real motivation. He foolishly bets $2000 on a basketball game and loses. All of his other bets with friends are futile efforts to save him from being beaten to a pulp by his bookie.
Yes, the crew of guys who regularly meet at their diner are all more or less losers, but they are loveable losers. Take another, the only one who is already married, Shrevie (Daniel Stern). He is obsessed with his record collection and furious that his wife (Ellen Barkin) has misfiled one of his LPs. And he prides himself on knowing the exact date, time, and label of the each 45, especially their B sides, which no one has even heard of.
Speaking of obsessions, we have one guy who just wanders around the diner repeating the complete dialogue from The Sweet Smell of Success, a great Tony Curtis / Burt Lancaster almost forgotten film from 1957, about 2 years prior to the setting of Diner.
Then there is the about-to-be-married friend, Eddie, (Steve Guttenberg), whose fiancé must pass a test to see if she can become his bride on New Year’s Eve, 1959. It is made up of football trivia, especially trivia about the Baltimore home team at that time, the Colts. Even the wedding colors are blue and white, to bolster this obsession. And strangely, everyone else – the girl, his own mother, and all his buds – are ok with this. Obsessions seems to rule with this bunch, even Boogie’s quest to bed – or a close approximation of it – every sweet young thing who catches his roving eye.
Next is Keven Bacon as Fenwick, or Fennie, the real oddball. He plays the role as in various stages of a drunken haze, just like the last 20 years of Truman Capote’s life . The same guy who frets about a nativity scene absent the baby Jesus ends up asleep in the empty manger in his underwear. Is he trying to be a substitute for the lost figure, like the real Joseph did in the surreal Millions? Needless to say, things do not end well for him or his friends.
Bookend that with Fennie sitting in front of the television watch Allen Ludden (Mr. Betty White) hosting the G.E. College Bowl, answering each one of the questions that even stomped the best of the real contestants. So Fennie is not dumb, just a little crazy.
Should I mention Ellen Barkin, Shrevie’s wife, who has a past with Boggie, and maybe a future, too? But of course, she is just another of Boogie’s evil bets to get the $2000 he owes.
There are a few other good looking girls, described as “Death,” the guys’ code word for a real beauty, such as Carol (Colette Bionignan), the one Boogie takes to the theater, and a beautiful equestrian, to name a few. What Boogie goes through to get her attention is phenomenal. Only he could pull it off.
The only guy I would feel safe with is Billy. He has gone away, now a graduate student, and he keeps his distance from his raucous friends, never engaging in their callous bets. Will his platonic and now maybe romantic relationship with Barbara (Kathryn Dowling) ever blossom?
All this culminates at the New Year’s Eve wedding. You might be surprised who catches the bouquet. For a deeper analysis, where each camera flash is a premotion, go to Gary Wells.
We have quotes from a film that is also compared to Seinfeld. “where people just talk, mostly about nothing,” though in Diner, there really is something behind what might appear as trivial.
Here are some of the best quotes:
You know what word I'm not comfortable with? Nuance. It's not a real word. Like gesture. Gesture's a real word. With gesture you know where you stand. But nuance? I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong. –Model
We all know most marriages depend on a firm grasp of football trivia. –Model
If you don't have good dreams, Bagel, you got nightmares. – Boogie
When you're making out, which do you prefer, Sinatra or Mathis? –Eddie
“Do you ever get the feeling that there's something going on that we don't know about?” – Fen wondering about the mysteries of women
“The whole thing with girls - it’s painful. And it seems like it keeps getting painful instead of easier.” – Billy
“- Edward 'Eddie' Simmons: Do you think I'm doing the right thing, gettin' married?
- Robert 'Boogie' Sheftell: Eddie, I can't tell you that.
- Edward 'Eddie' Simmons: I keep thinkin' that I'm gonna be missin' out on things, you know.
- Robert 'Boogie' Sheftell: That's what marriage is all about.”
Or is you prefer, here is a video of some more of them, too.
And if this review has piqued your interest, read the already mentioned terrific scene by scene analysis from Gary Wells.
An epic film. Life in the raw. Definitely from a guy’s point of view, but one even the girls play into. If nothing else, like so many 80s films, it is completely politically incorrect, and it would or could not be made today. But unrefined freedom is feast, even if it might only be a fried bologna sandwich or French fries in gravy.
–Kathy Borich
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Trailer
Film-Loving Foodie
Eddie insists his mother (Jessica James) cook him a fried bologna sandwich, spoiled kid that he is, even as he has slept until almost 3 in the afternoon.
His mom, played by former go-go dancer from the original Oceans 11, (another New Year’s Eve film as noted by Gary Wells), though not looking too hot in this film, still has her spunk, as she chases her son around the house with a very lethal looking cooking knife. The fact that she ultimately succumbs to his wishes shows that spunk is perhaps just a façade and that her spoiled son Eddie will never change, as his “best friend” Billy says with reluctant accuracy.
But we can give you something more closely akin to Baltimore cuisine than a fried bologna sandwich.
How about Baltimore’s famous Fries with Gravy, Eddies’s favorite diner dish?
Fries in Gravy
Ingredients
Prepared, hot Perfect French Fries
6 ounces cheese curds (we found our curds at Whole Foods Market)
3 cups prepared Beef Short Ribs Gravy, heated to hot
INSTRUCTIONS
1. Place hot French Fries in individual serving dishes or bowls.
2. Divide the cheese curds evenly, placing them on top of the fries.
3. Spoon the hot Beef Short Ribs Gravy on top and serve immediately.
Use links to make the fries and gravy if you like.
